In “Drawing,” the spare, residential Icon gallery offers the work of 13 Maine artists on intimate display. With one exception, two works are displayed by each artist; some of the most interesting insights can be found in the conversation between pieces. Many of these works have been exhibited before, and “Drawing” has the complexity and depth of a real artists’ art show, a studious conference on the medium of line drawing.

Astrid Bowlby’s black ink-on-paper renderings seem to aim for a clean and impenetrable blackness. Beginning the exhibition here, the viewer is asked to undergo an incomprehensible task, starting with a palette of complete opacity.

An enormous untitled graphite piece by Kate Beck cuts through the darkness. A selection from her “Whitespot” exhibition last year at Icon, the work of Beck’s hand consists of parallel graphite lines at varying depths and intensities over a white, empty space. The thin parallels collect and swell at points into deep fault lines, establishing a rhythm like a Steve Reich counterpoint. The careful, precise objectification of emptiness is one of Beck’s hallmarks, and the intricacy of this piece upholds it.

James Marshall’s “Drawing #13” adds a playful note to the gallery’s fugue. Composed of an overlapping cluster of tightly coiled cymbals of graphite on paper, “Drawing #13” achieves a sculptural three-dimensionality when viewed in the gallery, giving it the illusion of a contour found in a monstrous weld.

Two works by Noriko Sakanishi echo the musicality of Kate Beck’s “untitled.” In “Tipping Point” and “Honest Response” (graphite and ink on paper), five values of gray pepper the grid in a seemingly arbitrary language. Like a monochromatic Mondrian, the serial structure and form of Sakanishi’s work seems both codified and strongly informed by music, and her pieces here serve as swatches for the more realized work in her “Elements” exhibition at the June Fitzpatrick Gallery.

In the upstairs gallery, two ink-on-paper works from Frederick Lynch’s “Division” series continue the theme of systematic and rigorous repetition. Architectural and kaleidoscopic, Lynch’s works appear devoted to an arduous algebraic structure. The arches and doorways that emerge in “Division Drawing #10” are sectored and factored down to their smallest workable iterations, creating a pattern of archeological footprints.

Amparo Hufschmid breaks the serial mold with two works of graphite and beeswax on paper and panel. Named after a serene region of Maryland, “St. Mary’s County #26” depicts a semblance of dark graphite foreground before a bleak encaustic backdrop. Though a stark contrast to the intense linearity of Beck, Lynch, and Sakanishi, Hufschmid’s works are as grim and memorable as anything else in the exhibition.

Two works by Peter Bennett from “The Artist” series each depict a bizarrely armored figure in a comic-book universe style, mechanized and festooned with indistinguishable, slightly animated tools. While “The Artist #9” appears aided by his body’s artillery, “The Artist #10” appears more embattled, as if hampered by his own capabilities.

“Stairs Made With Windows” is a signature Joe Kievitt piece, with “windows” of bright plaid textiles weaving symmetrically over a white backdrop. The intrepid pattern converges confidently in the center of the drawing, forming a response to the achromatic drawings downstairs, which can seem to dissipate off the canvas. A second piece, “untitled,” maintains the tone in thick, churning coronas of gray plaids.

Deep cuts The beauty of Kara Walker's silhouettes lies in their concurrent brutality and daintiness, and in her unabashed exploration cutting to the meat of the black-and-white binary in American contemporary culture.

Magpie and copyist If you were going to recount the evolution of hippie guy fashion, you might say that what began with psychedelic ruffled shirts and corduroy pants in 1968 has in late middle age split into two streams: collarless white button-down shirts, usually buttoned right up to the neck and worn with a black vest, and Hawaiian shirts.

Review: Lady Gaga at the Wang Lady Gaga, resplendent, striding onto the stage of the Wang Theatre, has just removed an intricate half-Egyptian/half-Wagnerian headdress from her person, freeing her enormous blonde hairdo from its confinement.

Ghost stories For all of the excitement that surrounded Wilco on the Maine State Pier or Sufjan Stevens at Port City Music Hall or the various sold-out Ray LaMontagne shows of the past year, there is no question that last Sunday's Phish show at the Cumberland County Civic Center was the biggest thing to hit our fair city in a very long time.

Winged migration Since their start in the middle of the decade, Brown Bird have been one of the region's go-to chamber-folk outfits, with a couple of dark and stormy albums earning them a following in various nooks of New England. The release of their latest album, The Devil Dancing , feels like both an ending and a new beginning.

Being Scrooge Over the 33 years that Trinity Rep has been staging A Christmas Carol , many actors playing Ebenezer Scrooge have growled and grumped, cantankered, and curmugeoned around the stage.

Hot for teacher MECA faculty re-imagine the natural world and play with nostalgia

Review: WFNX's Miracle on Tremont Street 2009 A quick, mildly sycophantic shout-out to the "powers that be" here in Phoenix -Land: This year's Miracle on Tremont Street was nothing short of a wicked pissah powerhouse bill. The grand old Orpheum creaked under the weight of a sold-out audience, and a pronounced feistiness prevailed .

Review: New Super Mario Bros. Wii The staggering commercial success the folks at Nintendo have achieved in recent years has made it easy to overlook their more unfortunate habits.

Wanting more After its triumphant traversal of the complete Béla Bartók string quartets at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Borromeo Quartet was back for a free 20th- and 21st-century program at Jordan Hall, leading off with an accomplished recent piece by the 24-year-old Egyptian composer Mohammed Fairuz, Lamentation and Satire.

UNMASKING AFRICAN RELICS | February 26, 2014 An evocative, transportive exhibit of icons, artifacts, and spirit masks from some of the many, many cultures and “kingdoms” of West Africa, what is now Cameroon and Nigeria.

THE TEQUILA ODYSSEY | February 20, 2014 Each of the city’s drinking establishments has its roots in some primordial myth.

TRUE EFFIN' ARTISTRY | February 20, 2014 Mousa is the new recording alias of Vince Nez, a/k/a Aleric Nez, the name by which he released a nimble, unpredictable record in late 2010.

THE STATE OF SEA SALT | February 12, 2014 A surfeit of salt manufacturers have cropped up in the state over the last few years.

NOT YOUR AUNTIE'S DOOM | February 06, 2014 Sure, it may be Latin for “forest of trees,” but Sylvia more readily conjures some wiseacre aunt, not a burly group of veteran musicians trying to carve new notches in well-trod forms of heavy metal.